If only I believed in happily ever afters.
“It’s like a movie,” my mother says with wonder as though she hasn’t been in at least fifty films in her lifetime. She appears every bit the movie star she is, sprawled out on the dark blue velvet sofa that faces the full wall of glass windows looking out on Central Park. Her dressing gown cinches under her tactfully enhanced full bosoms, and her makeup-less face is shiny and red from a recent face peel. Very few people get to see Gracelyn Branson this way, and that’s how she keeps up the fa?ade of graceful aging.
“How’s your skin?” I ask, gesturing to the residual redness on her cheeks and forehead.
“Oh, you know—same old, same old,” she says, her lips slightly swollen from a recent injection of some kind. I try not to wince. “The press junket for Over the Moonlight is next week, and there’s Oscar buzz already, so I need to look my best. I’ll be up there next to all these young, gorgeous, polished babies. But I made sure Dr. Cook didn’t go too overboard this time.”
The “Can You Believe Gracelyn Branson Is in Her Seventies” articles and posts should come with a disclaimer listing all the things she does to keep her skin, teeth, hair, and figure looking effortlessly youthful. I try not to judge her for it. Being onscreen is her job—her passion. Aging under the hypercritical microscope of fame isn’t easy. Just like a teacher needs to recertify, and an IT guy needs to stay up to date with all the new technology, my mom needs to make the investment in looking young.
“Fingers crossed for the nod. Jimmy has a chance this year too, right?” I ask, referencing my oldest brother. I’m the youngest and least famous of the family, and I’m glad I no longer have to take my turn accompanying my mother to the long and mostly boring awards shows. It used to be that each of the four of Mom’s kids would take turns escorting her and Nonna during awards season if the actresses didn’t have a boyfriend or husband to go with them.
That’s how I met Dean—at one of the after-parties. I was standing in a corner, nursing a glass of flat champagne, and he was hiding from too many things to name: photographers, starlets, reporters, cougars wanting to attach their sinking star to his rising one. I didn’t mind going to awards shows after that—because I went with Dean.
Then Dean got sick and died. And soon after, Nonna passed. Within a handful of years, it was back to me and Mom. But she stopped asking me to go after my meltdown at the Golden Globes five years ago.
I should have known better—it’d been a year of loss with Dean and then Nonna right after. I shouldn’t have agreed to go with her. There were too many memories too easily accessible. I wasn’t ready, and the general public got a close-up of my “private sorrow,” or at least I think that’s what the headline called it when I couldn’t stop crying during a red-carpet interview and then went home before the opening monologue.
“It’s better not to jinx it,” she says, even though she was the one who brought up the whole topic of awards. “But I do have some news—I wanted to wait to tell you until after hearing about your big moment and all . . .” She sits up and raises her steaming coffee mug as though pausing to deepen the suspense in a scene. Half the time, I don’t know if I’m talking to my mom or talking to my mom playing a mom-like character.
“Yes . . . go on.” I nudge, knowing that showing I’m invested is the only way she’ll get on with the story.
“Mmmm, yes, sorry.” She puts down the mug as though she hasn’t been using it as a prop. “I have a new beau.”
Of course she does. Gracelyn Branson is rarely single for long. She’s been married three times, and she cycled through relationships during the times she wasn’t legally bound to one of her husbands, and even then, there was likely overlap I don’t like to think about for too long.
“Who is it this time?” I ask, and it comes out more judgmental than I intended. Thankfully, my mother is too busy rearranging her dressing gown to notice.
“It’s Mac Dorman,” she says like she’d just said Brad Pitt’s name. I raise my eyebrows, not knowing who the heck Mac Dorman is. The name sounds familiar but not familiar enough to bring up any memory of a face or recollection of a recent meeting.
“Who?” A warm whoosh of heated air pours from the overhead vents, rustling my hair and tickling my cheeks, reminding me how cold it is outside. I wrestle out of my wool peacoat as my mom sits up straighter, moving to the edge of her seat.
“Mac Dorman,” she repeats slowly. “You know—the documentarian.”
Oh yeah. Mac Dorman. I do remember him now. Shoulder-length graying hair, tortoiseshell glasses, and an air of superiority that follows him like a fancy cologne.
“The guy doing Nonna’s documentary?” He’d called me at my office about six weeks ago and pitched something about telling the “true story of Vivian Snow.” I’d seen him lurking about at various parties I’d attended with my mom but never actually talked to him. Mac Dorman is branded as the Ken Burns of celebrity biographical documentaries—but I think he makes them mostly because he’s nosy. He’s nominated for an Oscar or Emmy every year and has won a few, not that I’m keeping score.
“Yes! We started out exchanging emails, of all things, and then talking on the phone, and once we met in person a few weeks ago, the chemistry was unreal . . .”
“Too much information, Mom . . .” I wave away the image of my seventy-something mom with the snobby filmmaker.
“He’s very talented, and I believe you’ll like him more than you think. Has a lovely idea for the documentary about Mother.” She pauses and glances at me out of the corner of her swollen eyelids. I wonder how much the skin peeling and spa treatments have to do with her new love interest and find it noteworthy how quickly our discussion has gone from my engagement to her romance.
“You know how I feel about that film. If he insists on making some sort of gossipy tell-all about Nonna, I prefer we’re not involved. Otherwise, we give it legitimacy.” I twist my grandmother’s beautiful ring around on my left hand. I’m not used to it again. I wonder how long it took Nonna to get used to wearing it when she married for the first time. I wonder how long it took to get used to not wearing it when her husband died in the Battle of the Bulge a year and a half after their wedding.
“Nonna’s story deserves legitimacy. It’s a beautiful tribute, and he’s not the only one who thinks so. Mac recently had a huge influx of funding so . . . we had a thought.”
“We?” I try not to groan. Things are clearly getting serious with Mac. I can only assume my mother with her paycheck from her latest film is the “sudden influx.” Like the skilled method actor she is, my mom takes on the interests and passions of any man she falls in love with. When she dated Kurt Harverson, the NASCAR driver, she decided “going fast” was a metaphor for life, so she invested in his NASCAR team. Likewise, when she fell in love with her yoga instructor, she helped build an ashram in Brazil that ended up being a front for a cult.
“Yes. He appreciates my input. I do have years of experience in the industry. And let’s not forget the subject of this particular film is my own mother. Would you sit and listen?” She’s getting defensive, and I’m forgetting it’s not my job as a thirty-seven-year-old woman to make life choices for my grown-ass mother.